Japanese language education in the United States
Encyclopedia
Japanese language education in the United States began in the late 19th century, aimed mainly at Japanese American
children and conducted by parents and community institutions. Over the course of the next century, it would slowly expand to include non-Japanese as well as native speaker
s (mainly children of Japanese expatriates being educated in international school
s). A 2006 survey of foreign-language learners by the Japan Foundation
found 3,217 teachers teaching the Japanese language
to 117,969 students at 1,092 different institutions, a decrease of 16% in the number of students since the 2005 survey.
instruction in the United States
was aimed at heritage speakers. Japanese immigration to Hawaii
began in 1868, and to the mainland in 1869. Issei
parents, worrying about the increasing Americanization
of their nisei
children, established Japanese schools
outside of the regular school system to teach the language and culture of their ancestral country. In Hawaii, the first schools were established in the 1890s; by 1920, the schools enrolled 98% of all Japanese American children in Hawaii. Statistics for 1934 showed 183 schools teaching a total of 41,192 students. On the mainland, the first Japanese-language school was California's Nihongo Gakuin, established in 1903; by 1912, eighteen such schools had been set up in California alone. The schools' support for labor movements, including the 1920 strike
against the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association
, exposed fault lines of religion and class within the Japanese American community. Buddhist organizations were heavily involved in the establishment of schools, while Japanese American Christians, described as possessing a more assimilationist view, opposed their existence. Furthermore, non-Japanese also took a dim view of the schools, accusing them of indoctrinating Japanese American children and forming part of a wider strategy of the Japanese government to "colonize" the United States; public school teachers and the Office of Naval Intelligence
went so far as to label them "anti-American".
Instruction for foreign language
learners was established more slowly. One 1934 survey found only eight universities in the United States offering Japanese language education, mostly supported by only one instructor per university; it further estimated that only thirteen American professors possessed sufficient fluency in the Japanese language to use it in conducting research. As late as 1940, there were only 65 non-Japanese American
s who were able to read, write and understand the language. Due to this shortage, the military's need for personnel competent in Japanese even before the US entry into World War II
drove the Military Intelligence Service to establish its own specialized school aimed at training specialists to serve as interpreters, interrogators, and translators, the Military Intelligence Service Language School; initially based at the Presidio of San Francisco
, it was later moved to Minnesota
, first Camp Savage
, and then later Fort Snelling. Many of the students were Japanese American.
At the same time, Japanese language schools on the West Coast aimed at heritage speakers were closed down due to the Japanese American internment
. Even in Hawaii, which was not affected by Executive Order 9066
, authorities forced Japanese community schools to dissolve and liquidate their assets; however, after the war, the schools were revived with the support of issei, nisei, and non-Japanese community members. Enrollment in such schools declined compared to the pre-war period; for example, the Moiliili Language School in Honolulu, which with over 1,000 students in 1938 was the largest Japanese-language school in Hawaii, had only 85 students .
Japanese language teachers was established at the University of Hawaii
under the provisions of the National Defense Act of 1958; it initially admitted 20 students. Enrollment in Japanese language courses in US high schools had the fastest growth rate out of all languages during the 1980s, the time of the Japanese asset bubble. During the 1990s, The College Board, a United States standardized testing agency, began to offer an SAT Subject Test
in Japanese and conducted the first sitting of the Japanese Advanced Placement
exam in May 2007; these examinations enable high school students to obtain college credit for their prior study of the Japanese language. However, unlike Chinese, which continued to grow in the early 2000s, the popularity of Japanese declined sharply, with thousands of students dropping the language. According to a survey by the Center for Applied Linguistics
, the teaching of Japanese declined at both the primary and secondary levels between 2006 and 2009.
Japanese-language education aimed at native speaker
s began later, as the rise of the economy of Japan
resulted in increasing numbers of companies sending employees and their families to the United States for short-term assignments. , the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology officially recognized three Japanese day schools in the United States, in Guam
, Chicago
, and New York
. In addition, there were 74 weekend/supplementary schools, of which 29 were supplied with at least one teacher by the Japanese government.
Japanese American
are American people of Japanese heritage. Japanese Americans have historically been among the three largest Asian American communities, but in recent decades have become the sixth largest group at roughly 1,204,205, including those of mixed-race or mixed-ethnicity...
children and conducted by parents and community institutions. Over the course of the next century, it would slowly expand to include non-Japanese as well as native speaker
Native Speaker
Native Speaker is Chang-Rae Lee’s first novel. In Native Speaker, he creates a man named Henry Park who tries to assimilate into American society and become a “native speaker.”-Plot summary:...
s (mainly children of Japanese expatriates being educated in international school
International school
An International school is loosely defined as a school that promotes international education, in an international environment, either by adopting an international curriculum such as that of the International Baccalaureate or Cambridge International Examinations, or by following a national...
s). A 2006 survey of foreign-language learners by the Japan Foundation
Japan Foundation
The was established in 1972 by an Act of the Japanese Diet as a special legal entity to undertake international dissemination of Japanese culture, and became an independent administrative institution under the jurisdiction of the Foreign Ministry of Japan on 1 October 2003 under the "Independent...
found 3,217 teachers teaching the Japanese language
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
to 117,969 students at 1,092 different institutions, a decrease of 16% in the number of students since the 2005 survey.
Origins
The earliest Japanese languageJapanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
instruction in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
was aimed at heritage speakers. Japanese immigration to Hawaii
Japanese in Hawaii
The Japanese in Hawaii simply Japanese or “Local Japanese”, rarely Kepanī are the second largest ethnic group in Hawaii. At their height in 1920, they constituted 43% of Hawaii's population. They now number about 16.7% of the islands' population, according to the 2000 U.S...
began in 1868, and to the mainland in 1869. Issei
Issei
Issei is a Japanese language term used in countries in North America, South America and Australia to specify the Japanese people first to immigrate. Their children born in the new country are referred to as Nisei , and their grandchildren are Sansei...
parents, worrying about the increasing Americanization
Americanization (immigration)
Americanization is the process of an immigrant to the United States of America becoming a person who shares American values, beliefs and customs and is assimilated into American society...
of their nisei
Nisei
During the early years of World War II, Japanese Americans were forcibly relocated from their homes in the Pacific coast states because military leaders and public opinion combined to fan unproven fears of sabotage...
children, established Japanese schools
Nihonjin gakko
, also called Japanese School, is a full day school outside of Japan for native speakers of Japanese. It is an expatriate school, designed for children whose parents are working on diplomatic, business, or educational mission overseas and have plans to go back to Japan for good.The schools offer...
outside of the regular school system to teach the language and culture of their ancestral country. In Hawaii, the first schools were established in the 1890s; by 1920, the schools enrolled 98% of all Japanese American children in Hawaii. Statistics for 1934 showed 183 schools teaching a total of 41,192 students. On the mainland, the first Japanese-language school was California's Nihongo Gakuin, established in 1903; by 1912, eighteen such schools had been set up in California alone. The schools' support for labor movements, including the 1920 strike
Oahu Sugar Strike of 1920
The Oahu Sugar Strike of 1920 was a multiracial strike in Hawaii of two unions the Filipino American Filipino Labor Union and the Japanese American Federation of the Japanese Labor...
against the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association
Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association
Founded in 1895, the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association was an unincorporated, voluntary organization of sugar plantation owners in the Hawaiian Islands. Its objective was to promote the mutual benefits of its members and the development of the sugar industry in the islands. It conducted...
, exposed fault lines of religion and class within the Japanese American community. Buddhist organizations were heavily involved in the establishment of schools, while Japanese American Christians, described as possessing a more assimilationist view, opposed their existence. Furthermore, non-Japanese also took a dim view of the schools, accusing them of indoctrinating Japanese American children and forming part of a wider strategy of the Japanese government to "colonize" the United States; public school teachers and the Office of Naval Intelligence
Office of Naval Intelligence
The Office of Naval Intelligence was established in the United States Navy in 1882. ONI was established to "seek out and report" on the advancements in other nations' navies. Its headquarters are at the National Maritime Intelligence Center in Suitland, Maryland...
went so far as to label them "anti-American".
Instruction for foreign language
Foreign language
A foreign language is a language indigenous to another country. It is also a language not spoken in the native country of the person referred to, i.e. an English speaker living in Japan can say that Japanese is a foreign language to him or her...
learners was established more slowly. One 1934 survey found only eight universities in the United States offering Japanese language education, mostly supported by only one instructor per university; it further estimated that only thirteen American professors possessed sufficient fluency in the Japanese language to use it in conducting research. As late as 1940, there were only 65 non-Japanese American
Japanese American
are American people of Japanese heritage. Japanese Americans have historically been among the three largest Asian American communities, but in recent decades have become the sixth largest group at roughly 1,204,205, including those of mixed-race or mixed-ethnicity...
s who were able to read, write and understand the language. Due to this shortage, the military's need for personnel competent in Japanese even before the US entry into World War II
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...
drove the Military Intelligence Service to establish its own specialized school aimed at training specialists to serve as interpreters, interrogators, and translators, the Military Intelligence Service Language School; initially based at the Presidio of San Francisco
Presidio of San Francisco
The Presidio of San Francisco is a park on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula in San Francisco, California, within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area...
, it was later moved to Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
, first Camp Savage
Camp Savage
Camp Savage is the former site of a Military Intelligence Service language school operating during World War II. The school itself was established in San Francisco, but was moved in 1942 to Savage, Minnesota in the interest of national security. The purpose of the school was to teach the Japanese...
, and then later Fort Snelling. Many of the students were Japanese American.
At the same time, Japanese language schools on the West Coast aimed at heritage speakers were closed down due to the Japanese American internment
Japanese American internment
Japanese-American internment was the relocation and internment by the United States government in 1942 of approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese who lived along the Pacific coast of the United States to camps called "War Relocation Camps," in the wake of Imperial Japan's attack on...
. Even in Hawaii, which was not affected by Executive Order 9066
Executive Order 9066
United States Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942 authorizing the Secretary of War to prescribe certain areas as military zones...
, authorities forced Japanese community schools to dissolve and liquidate their assets; however, after the war, the schools were revived with the support of issei, nisei, and non-Japanese community members. Enrollment in such schools declined compared to the pre-war period; for example, the Moiliili Language School in Honolulu, which with over 1,000 students in 1938 was the largest Japanese-language school in Hawaii, had only 85 students .
Post-World War II
The first program aimed at training secondary schoolSecondary school
Secondary school is a term used to describe an educational institution where the final stage of schooling, known as secondary education and usually compulsory up to a specified age, takes place...
Japanese language teachers was established at the University of Hawaii
University of Hawaii
The University of Hawaii System, formally the University of Hawaii and popularly known as UH, is a public, co-educational college and university system that confers associate, bachelor, master, and doctoral degrees through three university campuses, seven community college campuses, an employment...
under the provisions of the National Defense Act of 1958; it initially admitted 20 students. Enrollment in Japanese language courses in US high schools had the fastest growth rate out of all languages during the 1980s, the time of the Japanese asset bubble. During the 1990s, The College Board, a United States standardized testing agency, began to offer an SAT Subject Test
SAT Subject Tests
SAT Subject Tests is the name for 20 multiple-choice standardized tests given on individual subjects, usually taken to improve a student's credentials for admission to colleges in the United States. Students typically choose which tests to take depending upon college entrance requirements for the...
in Japanese and conducted the first sitting of the Japanese Advanced Placement
AP Japanese Language and Culture
Advanced Placement Japanese Language and Culture is a course offered by the College Board as part of the Advanced Placement Program. It is intended to give students a thorough background in the Japanese language and Japanese social customs...
exam in May 2007; these examinations enable high school students to obtain college credit for their prior study of the Japanese language. However, unlike Chinese, which continued to grow in the early 2000s, the popularity of Japanese declined sharply, with thousands of students dropping the language. According to a survey by the Center for Applied Linguistics
Center for Applied Linguistics
The Center for Applied Linguistics is a private, nonprofit organization that describes its mission as “working to improve communication through better understanding of language and culture”...
, the teaching of Japanese declined at both the primary and secondary levels between 2006 and 2009.
Japanese-language education aimed at native speaker
Native Speaker
Native Speaker is Chang-Rae Lee’s first novel. In Native Speaker, he creates a man named Henry Park who tries to assimilate into American society and become a “native speaker.”-Plot summary:...
s began later, as the rise of the economy of Japan
Economy of Japan
The economy of Japan, a free market economy, is the third largest in the world after the United States and the People's Republic of China, and ahead of Germany at 4th...
resulted in increasing numbers of companies sending employees and their families to the United States for short-term assignments. , the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology officially recognized three Japanese day schools in the United States, in Guam
Guam
Guam is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States located in the western Pacific Ocean. It is one of five U.S. territories with an established civilian government. Guam is listed as one of 16 Non-Self-Governing Territories by the Special Committee on Decolonization of the United...
, Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, and New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. In addition, there were 74 weekend/supplementary schools, of which 29 were supplied with at least one teacher by the Japanese government.